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Updated: June 28, 2025
That," the colour mounted to her forehead; she, too, had grown ashamed of the first night, ashamed and astonished that she had not understood Stephen La Mothe's transparent good faith from the very first, "that was precaution. In the Château we could watch the watcher. Then you began that fairy tale and your face told me you believed it every word. That puzzled me.
The justice of the King, the justice of the father, can no longer no longer " But even his restless pacing could not give him power to clothe the grim thought in blunt words, and Commines was silent. La Mothe's scornful indignation had no such reticence, nor had he yet learned how to cloak the ugliness of a naked truth in the pleasant euphemisms of diplomacy.
As the light fell upon La Mothe's face he drew a shivering sigh and clenched his teeth with a snap. Life or death had passed the door which was it? "Come nearer," he said, beckoning. "Nearer yet. You, Beaufoy, stay there by the door. The Dauphin? Charles?" "Well, Sire." "Well!" The beckoning hand dropped, then he leaned forward, covering his face.
But, dearer even than these, he best loved to reproduce in little the tragedy which had laid the mill desolate, and it was La Mothe's participation in that mock combat which had aroused Commines' contempt. What boy of imagination has not revelled in such sport, living a glorious hour beyond his age?
Placing the candlestick on the table he lifted La Mothe's wine bottle and smelt it with slow carefulness, applying it first to one nostril then to the other. "Vintage '63," he said appreciatively, "and that animal Saxe fobs me off with '75." "Then try my '63," said La Mothe, "and we shall see if Saxe has another bottle of the same."
It vexed him that Villon should speak at all of Ursula de Vesc, and still more that his answer was so lame. But recognizing the symptoms out of a wide experience, Villon only laughed softly at the brusque retort. "Some peaches hang themselves high," he said, the laugh broadening as La Mothe's face grew wrathful, "but they are peaches all the same.
"I?" And into La Mothe's mind, as he stood silent after the startled ejaculation, there flooded significant, misunderstood hints dropped by the King in Valmy, and by Commines himself on the road to Château-Renaud, hints which had seemed to him meaningless in the memory of the little coat of mail which was the secret gift of a father's love. "I, the King's arm of justice?
With that dual consciousness which, even more than dissimulation, is the diplomatist's prime necessity for success in the worsting of an adversary, he gathered and stored for use in his memory the salient points from La Mothe's story, while all the while, co-energetically, his mind was busy searching out how best to use this new tool for the cementing closer that fabric of France which was his pride and glory.
Commines paused in his slow walk, slipped his hand from La Mothe's arm, and they stood silent side by side. Then in his perplexity he moved a few paces away, halted, turned again and faced La Mothe. "Poor lad, and I have no alternative. The King and my duty alike allow me none. Stephen, in self-defence I must be frank with you.
It was very careless, Monsieur La Mothe, and I am very angry with you." "Charles! Charles!" broke in the Franciscan, "Roland would never have said that; and I am sure it was not Monsieur La Mothe's fault." For a moment the boy turned upon the priest in a child's gust of passion at the interruption, his face a struggle between petulance and tears.
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